Where are you?
And yet we don’t have to stay that way on those particular subjects. You know we can’t all be specialists, but we each can know where to go with our questions. Today, do you have questions on all the pain and evil here?
God is all powerful.
God is all loving, and yet..
Evil, pain and suffering exist here.
Seems so incongruous to us huh -- it’s actually a trilemma. How could an all loving God allow such evil and suffering to happen here? And why is it a trilemma? Well, it’s because...
God is all knowingGod is all good.God is all wise.God is eternal.
...and that changes the paradigm completely for you, and then you have the issue of time.
Listen, there are some emotionally satisfying answers as time goes by. You’ve suffered pains. I’ve had back pain from hard work before, I’ve experienced the pain from family members not loving each other, but doing the opposite. How has the marriage of your parents gone, those two you love so much -- smooth or way too rough and painful?
There is a hill called Calvary where Jesus hung on a real Cross yet three days later emerged from that borrowed tomb. There is suffering, there is a Savior, there is a relationship we each can enjoy, there is daily comfort from Him. He conquers not in spite of the mystery and darkness and pain from evil here, He conquers through it and makes you the person He wants you to be.
Ask a lot of honest questions yourself. Be a polyglot and listen well to other people's responses (like from reading heavily their ideas) and their perspectives. I'm convinced that answers are not just theoretical, they are also relational.
A little child knows that his mother would never cause him pain or do him harm, and yet now here is a needle coming right towards him in what she calls a doctors office. He's got questions, but has got to trust her cuz of their love relationship. Later on he'll fully understand why.
Do ..respectfully question the questioner first. Behind every question is a questioner. There is always a reason behind the question, is it philosophical or from a felt need? Is anything wrong with anything? Is there a moral wrongness to anything in your life? People need to be opened up with their own assumptions, that’s why Jesus often responded to questions with questions.
